Overview of Google Display Ads

If you’ve been watching our blog, you might have read our last post, “An Overview of Google Search Ads.” Today let’s continue that thread with an overview of Google display ads.

What is the difference between search ads and display ads? Let’s quickly review Google search ads. Search ads show up in search results. When someone searches a topic or keyword that you have purchased, your ad shows up on the Google search page as a search result..

Google display ads, on the other hand, can appear anywhere you are, and here’s how it works. First, consider the audience you want to reach. Who would be interested in your product or services? You will dictate your criteria (e.g., gender, age, location) as you create your ad. As those who fit your specific audience are browsing the web, they’re going to see your ads on different websites.

For instance, if you’ve been on a website and an ad unrelated to that site shows up for something that you just searched not long ago, you are seeing a display ad. Let’s say you’re on a news website, and over in the sidebar there’s an ad for a vacuum cleaner that you had just been searching for. Or maybe the ad is for a company that sells vacuums. This appeared because you’re in their target audience, and most likely, that’s a Google display ad.

There are other companies that sell display ads. But Google AdSense is definitely the biggest one. If an advertiser wants to buy ads, they will go with Google display ads. If an advertiser wants to display ads on someone’s website, they will go with Google AdSense. These are two different components to display ads, and WunderTRE can help sort through that.

This brings up another question. As a business owner, what are the benefits of using Google display ads? First, you can target people on a wide range of sites. While they’re just browsing the internet, they can see your ad. It can include pictures, video in motion, and movement elements. This is your opportunity to get in front of your target audience on the websites that they’re browsing all the time, assuming that those websites are using Google AdSense. There are thousands of thousands of websites that use Google AdSense. So chances are that your target audience is going to a website that uses or displays Google ads.

Let’s look at another way for you to get in front of people. Much like Facebook with Google display ads, you can actually do retargeting. First, you upload a list of email addresses of current customers, or people that were leads on your website but maybe haven’t purchased from you yet. As they visit different websites, they’re going to be seeing an ad for something they they just searched on your website. They will be retargeted with your product or services. Let’s go back to that vacuum: let’s say you searched for a vacuum cleaner, and that vacuum cleaner showing up absolutely everywhere… crazy! How does that happen? Now you know. That’s remarketing in action. Most likely, they’re remarketing through Google display ads. It’s a very powerful tool. You connect with users where they are. It’s not subtle; it puts you in front of them constantly.

So now you see that it’s good to run Google search ads in tandem with Google display ads, Facebook ads, and maybe an Instagram ad. If you’re running all those things in tandem, you’re going to have a good ads presence in general. If you have good content, and you’re running Google display ads, Google search ads, Facebook, and Instagram ads, it’s going to be very, very good for you and your business. You will be staying in front of your customers, on every platform.

I believe that Google search ads and Google display ads, are important for business owners to have, but I wouldn’t necessarily lead with this ad. Most of the time, I recommend Facebook first and then Google search ads when it comes to buying ads. But if you have the budget, working with Google display ads is definitely important, such as maybe the third or fourth area in which you invest your advertising budget. Let’s say a nice order of priority might be to start with Facebook and Instagram, then maybe create Google search ads, and then create your YouTube or Google display ad presence. It’s definitely a great thing to back up with.

In other posts for another time, we will break down buying Google ads, Google display ads, and we’ll go through the whole workflow. I hope you have gotten some good ideas with these quick, informative overviews. We will break it down further in a future post. Thanks for reading.